Love Light (Shadenfreude) — Blackbird Archive

← v5n2, Fall 2006

The tomato sauce upsets twice,

almost suffocating his small self,

that much sauce—but no

blood, no, the dream’s resistant,

not a single lip’s

bitten for the taste.

Certainly I taste

the granular wave of sauce

and inhale and cough

then wipe his face with my skirt

which could be skin the way

I pull it from my hips.

I have to undress him, the groceries

cold in their cans,

the red pouring out meaning,

canceling light so cold

you groan, almost

inside me. I open

my eyes, the curtain glowing

across the alley as red as

flame—grief

can be that strong.

family grief body

Terese Svoboda

Terese Svoboda is the author of six books of fiction, including the short story collection Live Sacrifice (forthcoming from Ravenna Press, 2017), the novel Bohemian Girl (Bison Books, 2011), and the novel Tin God (University of Nebraska Press, 2006). She is also the author of five poetry collections, including Professor Harriman's Steam Air-Ship (Eyewear Publishing, 2016), Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet (Schaffner Press, 2016), and When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley (Anhinga Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in Conjunctions , The Massachusetts Review , The Kenyon Review , and elsewhere. She has been awarded a 2013 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the 2007 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, and a 2003 Pushcart Prize. Photo by Joyce George